I am in the process of writing a review of a collection of dystopian stories (Brave New Worlds edited by John Joseph Adams), and there is something that is not going to make it into my review because it is really tangential to the subject, but which I still wanted to draw attention to.
At the back of the collection, Adams has included a reading list, ‘For Further Reading’ compiled by Ross E. Lockhart. Nothing particularly controversial in that, a good idea in fact given how much dystopian literature is out there. But someone, presumably Lockhart, gave in to an insane idea which is encapsulated in one sentence in his introduction: “Titles notable for their high literary value are marked with an asterisk.”
The following are the titles that have been singled out for an asterisk:
The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
The Windup Girl Paolo Bacigalupi
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
The Sheep Look Up John Brunner
The Parable of the Sower Octavia Butler
The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick
Neuromancer William Gibson
Lanark Alasdair Gray
Make Room! Make Room Harry Harrison
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
It Can’t Happen Here Sinclair Lewis
The Iron Heel Jack London
The Road Cormac McCarthy
Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell
The Gold Coast Kim Stanley Robinson
Liberation Brian Francis Slattery
Player Piano Kurt Vonnegut Jr
We Yevgeny Zamyatin
Not a bad list. I am familiar with practically all of these titles and am quite happy to ascribe literary value to nearly all of them.
But then, these are some of the works that do not qualify for an asterisk:
Einstein’s Monsters Martin Amis
Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood
The Year of the Flood Margaret Atwood
In the Country of Last Things Paul Auster
Crash J.G. Ballard
Hello America J.G. Ballard
My Melancholy Face Heinrich Boll
The Jagged Orbit John Brunner
The Shockwave Rider John Brunner
A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
The Wanting Seed Anthony Burgess
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said Philip K. Dick
334 Thomas M. Disch
Ape and Essence Aldous Huxley
Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
The Lathe of Heaven Ursula K. Le Guin
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub Stanislaw Lem
Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
Paradise Toni Morrison
Invitation to a Beheading Vladimir Nabokov
And Chaos Died Joanna Russ
Snow Crash Neal Stephenson
Earth Abides George R Stewart
Love Among the Ruins Evelyn Waugh
The Time Machine H.G. Wells
Suddenly the questions arise. I would rate the literary quality of the second list higher than that of the first list. How can you count one Atwood novel but not the other two? How can you rate The Sheep Look Up by Brunner but not The Shockwave Rider, which is in literary terms at least a superior novel (and, come to that, how can you miss out entirely Stand on Zanzibar, which is better than either of them)? How can you not ascribe literary quality to Amis, Auster, Ballard, Boll, Burgess, Disch, Ishiguro, Le Guin, Lem, Mitchell, Morrison, Nabokov, Waugh or Wells?
Obviously the whole thing is subjective, obviously there is no agreed standard for what counts as literary quality, obviously there was an agenda going on here (though what agenda?). But you do wonder.
I don’t mind offering a reading list like this; the list as a whole is a good list. But why do we insist on trying to mark off the literary from the non-literary, the good from the bad, the quality from the also-rans, when we have no real and objective standards by which to make such distinctions? The only possible response to such an exercise is ridicule.